Sortation of items in facilities, such as material handling facilities, can be inefficient in terms of time, space, cost, and labor. For example, sorting processes may be performed largely manually and with fixed capacity, and such processes may take up a large amount of space within facilities. In addition, slow or inefficient sorting processes may in turn adversely affect downstream processes, such as storage, picking, packing, and shipping items from material handling facilities, because unsorted items may generally be unavailable to such downstream processes. Accordingly, there is a need for sortation systems and methods that can operate with improved efficiency in terms of time, space, cost, and/or labor, with variable and scalable capacity, and with a smaller footprint within facilities.
While implementations are described herein by way of example, those skilled in the art will recognize that the implementations are not limited to the examples or drawings described. It should be understood that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit implementations to the particular form disclosed but, on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.